


So Much More

by TheDoctorIsIcecube



Series: MCU Spiderman Origin (feat. Autistic Peter Parker) [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Autistic Peter, Pre-Spider-Man: Homecoming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-07 00:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11612013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDoctorIsIcecube/pseuds/TheDoctorIsIcecube
Summary: Everything being loud and bright had always been a problem for Peter, but it got worse very quickly after a very strange day.





	So Much More

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, it's an origin story! Don't kill me I just love speculation.

Peter had always found it kinda shitty to live in a big place with noises and sounds and smells. It was pretty awful. Sometimes it was way too overwhelming, but no one paid any attention to him. They presumed it was because he'd been displaced from his life and stuff and that was the reason he cried and was fussy. No one really liked it when he cried a lot, but that didn't mean he could stop it or anything. He was just a weird kid, they said, and no one really understood why. He wanted to understand, but no one had ever offered an explanation that wasn't hurtful.

After a while, he stopped caring mostly about what must be wrong with him, because being smart seemed to make up for it. Teachers didn't mind that he stumbled over his words a lot, because he did all his homework to a very high standard. People worried about how he didn't have many friends (or any at all), but in the end it meant he was more successful in getting stuff done because he wasn't being distracted. 

Sometimes having no friends did bother him a little. There was no one in life to talk to about the things he really cared about. Which was, a great deal of the time, science. He loved science. Specifically engineering stuff. He loved making new things with chemicals or machinery or ideally both. If he could, he'd spend all his time in the school science labs or computer rooms, begging the teachers for spare computer parts or chemicals that weren't needed.

If he could. He meant if he wasn't cripplingly shy. He couldn't talk to adults. Ever. It was hard enough to ask his aunt and uncle if they could maybe buy a different kind of cheese because the one they had was weird and bad. He didn't know why he was this way, why he had aversions like that to so many different things. People always made fun of him for it, they had done all his life. But there was nothing he could do, so he tried not to bother about it. Even though he was sort of lonely and kind of scared of everything most of the time.

The winter after he turned fifteen saw him in a sort of internship with the local science lab. He'd won a placement on a special college level course on genetic engineering, and he was terrified but incredibly excited. There were lots of adults and older kids around, and every single one of them was looking down on him. He could tell that they were. He just knew it. He was the shortest, and no matter how he tried to fit in, he looked like the one with no money. No proud parent to watch him go in. No friends, either. Half these people knew each other already.

He'd known when something had gone seriously wrong. He'd been able to see it, in the three people who filed into the room at exactly the same time with no context to their arrival. He could hear it, there were doors closing and a lot more people talking than before. He wanted to ask what was going on, but they'd clearly been trying to keep it hidden and he really, really didn't want to look like an idiot. He'd managed to keep up with everything all day so far.

And he'd felt it when he got bitten by something. But he never saw what it was and he didn't want to make a big deal. Again, he understood everything while some of the older students clearly hadn't and it made him feel good about himself. He let himself forget about the whole being bitten thing. Convinced himself it had just been a mosquito and that the exhaustion when he got home and the feverish feeling was just to do with the heat. He'd be better once he'd slept it off, surely. As soon as he got the chance, he fell into bed, the feverishness getting worse but not stopping him from falling asleep almost immediately.

-

That was all fine and good, sleeping. But...he didn't wake up until the next afternoon. Basically evening. It was six in the evening. He’d made it back at four in the afternoon on the previous day. His aunt and uncle were out, so they hadn't come to wake him up, but it was a good thing he hadn't had anything to do that day. Still, though...that was over twenty four hours he'd spent asleep.

And he felt awful. He felt like every damn nerve in his body was on fire. Every tiny amount of pressure was killing him. He felt like he could hear every word that every person in the building was saying. And it was so bright. He didn't bother even trying to get out of bed, just groaned faintly and pulled the covers back over his head in a useless attempt to just make all of this stop.

It didn't work. Argh. He didn't know what to do. He needed some way to just… It was all so loud and bright and awful. Everything hurt. It was like someone had beaten him up and then decided to make whatever was wrong with him about fifty times worse. He pressed his hands over his ears, but that just hurt. No matter how hard he squeezed his eyes shut, it still felt like the light was burning them. This was awful. How was he supposed to do anything like this? What could he tell people? That he was too sick to get up or move or do anything again ever? He could probably be sick for about two days until he had to go back to the lab again to continue the course. He had homework stuff to do for that one anyway. What if this was some sort of sickness caused by whatever had bitten him yesterday? What if he was going to die from this?

No. As much as he hated this, he had to get his shit together. Before his aunt and uncle came home, too. They worried about him too much, and this would be worse. Exercising tremendous force of will, he pushed himself out of bed, squinting through as little of his eyes as he could and keeping his hands tight over his ears. He had a pair of earplugs somewhere, those would help...

Sometimes he got really awful with all the overwhelmed stuff, so he took earplugs for silent study and also for exams. And whenever he didn't mind looking like an arse in public, honestly. It took a lot of fumbling around in several drawers, but eventually he found the earplugs and shoved them in, breathing a grateful sigh at the sudden blissful quiet. Now the only problem was the light. The sounds weren't gone at all, but the bad pressure of his hands against his ears and the utter overwhelming nonsense of it was gone. It was like...it was like it normally was. Maybe a little bit louder than normal. He could manage this, just about. Still squinting, he made his way downstairs and dug around in the cupboard full of miscellaneous summer things, pulling out a pair of sunglasses.

It was much better once he had them on. But he couldn't wear sunglasses all the time, damn it. Did he have to tell people that everything that was wrong with him just suddenly got worse? Because he didn't want to do that. And he couldn't wear sunglasses all the time anyway. People already made fun of him for being weird. What would they do now? He didn't have a single way of hiding any of this new stuff- earplugs and sunglasses weren't practical for public wear, or for his internship. Oh, he just didn't know what to do. He could hope it got better. With sleep, or something. Maybe he was just ill. He still felt pretty ill.

Unless it really was a horrible mosquito disease. Fever was a symptom of malaria, wasn't it? He'd been feeling feverish before he went to bed, but he'd...he knew a little bit about illnesses. Quite a lot, actually. And if he'd just passed out from a fever from malaria, he probably wouldn't be up and about now. So, this was something else. Something-

 

His hand snapped out before he even really registered what was going on, snatching a fly that had been buzzing in circles around the room. He let go of it as quickly as he caught it. Ew. That was disgusting. He'd never actually touched a moving fly before. He'd never caught one as it moved. Weird. Considering that he was clearly ill, that was really weird. And the way it had happened was so odd, too- almost like a reflex instead of a conscious action. Maybe that mosquito or whatever had injected some sort of weird mind-controlling parasite into him? He wouldn't put it past the stuff they were working on in that lab. They were testing genetic mutations on bugs and stuff. Of course, they couldn't test it on humans because they were using radiation, but it was interesting.

Out of curiosity, he put a hand to the back of his neck to try and feel the bite. There was a small red lump, a little sore to the touch and hotter than the surrounding area. Feeling a little more, his fingers encountered something small stuck on the collar of his shirt, which on closer inspection was revealed to be a small, squashed spider. Wow. He'd never been bitten by a spider before...was this a poisonous spider? Was he dying from that instead of malaria? Maybe the bite was all weird and bright green or something. Rushing to his aunt and uncle's room, he grabbed a hand mirror and ran into the bathroom, angling the smaller mirror so that the reflection of his neck showed in the bathroom mirror. Thankfully, it wasn't green, just a bit red. And larger than he'd thought.

This was not something he knew how to deal with. He could deal with homework and tests! He couldn't deal with talking to people or potential death by radioactive spider. Perhaps he should call 911? That seemed like the reasonable, rational thing to do. They'd understand, wouldn't they? They'd have a cure for whatever this was. But something...he didn't know. 911 would involve talking to an operator and explaining what was going on. And then if they even came, they'd want to talk to him more and more. And that would involve accusing the people running his course of putting him in danger. And then he'd lose his place.

And would they even believe him? He was a teenage kid with silly earplugs and sunglasses, a history of weird behaviour which was absolutely documented by a string of educational psychologists that he’d been dragged to, and a bizarre story about being bitten by a mutant spider in the lab he had been studying in. No. So it would be better to attempt to deal with this on his own. Even if on his own meant suffering through whatever this was. If things got seriously worse, he'd consider calling an ambulance. But things had stayed much the same since he woke up, maybe even gotten a little better. He guessed he was just adjusting to all of it. Hypersensitivity...maybe that should be what he was looking into. Ways to help with that.

He made his way back up to his room and flopped down in front of his ancient computer, waiting for it to boot up. The faint whirring sound it made was a nice one. Probably the only sound he'd heard since waking up that didn't grate at his ears. 

The whirring increased in volume as the fans kicked in, a pleasant white noise to drown out everything else. He quickly logged in and opened his web browser, searching for ways to handle hypersensitivity. Apparently, hypersensitivity was the wrong word, because everything was just telling him how to be less emotional about criticism. He didn't need that. The spider hadn't given him a rude comment on his English homework, it had bitten him and given him weird super powers, like a bat or something. Adjusting the wording of his search, he found that it was really, really very difficult to get actual advice on the problem he was looking to solve. Damn it. There was plenty of stuff about something called 'sensory overload', which seemed pretty relevant. It sounded like something he'd been experiencing all his life, really, only now it was much worse. 

But looking up how to deal with it was suspiciously hard. Forums full of parents talking about kids who wouldn't eat their vegetables. Damn it, he just wanted to know how to move without feeling like a rock had just hit him on every inch of his body. Apparently applying pressure to himself was supposed to help, as was moving around, but both of those just made things worse. Great. The only other advice he would find was to 'sleep it off'. There was a problem there, and it was that he'd just slept for twenty six hours. He wasn't tired anymore. He was hungry and also really thirsty and really twitchy. He wanted to do stuff but he also felt like his mind was made of slush.

Unable to sit still for much longer, he went downstairs and ran himself a glass of water. It tasted somehow earthier than usual, and the cold of it spread through his body like ice. He was probably just really dehydrated. Fever and no liquids for twenty six hours? Probably really dehydrated. He just had to apply logic to all of this strange stuff happening to him. Then he'd be okay. Logic was his thing, after all.

He'd had a drink, now it was time to deal with food. There was sliced bread in the cupboard- he'd just make a sandwich, something easy. He still felt too awful to make any decent food. It was...not as nice as drinking water, that's for sure. It was a bit disgusting, honestly. Dry and strange. Bread didn't normally feel like that, but he guessed he was ill. Sort of. He hoped this would be over soon. It was really inconvenient to have so many sights and sounds pressing in so close all the time, and even food was bad like this.

He closed his eyes entirely for a moment, just feeling everything else. Even with the earplugs, it felt like he could hear everything and feel every tiny movement of things in his vicinity. There was a faint scratching sound from above the fridge that probably meant an insect was up there; there were people talking quietly nextdoor. He couldn't make out their words and he didn't want to. This felt like a more natural level for his hearing, even if it was still much better than before. It wasn't overwhelming at the moment. All of this was weird, but manageably weird for now. And then it would get better soon, with any luck.

And then he moved and knocked his plate off the table- it was in his hands again before he could blink in surprise. Okay. He was clumsy usually, but reflexes like that were brand new. That was a good thing, really. Maybe he'd stop breaking so much stuff now. It was just sort of weird, he supposed. He didn't get all of this, but seeing as he had no way of understanding it, it didn't frustrate him too much. He could work out how to do this on his own. He had to, which was quite an incentive, but he was sure he could.

**Author's Note:**

> A small disclaimer: I wrote this almost immediately after watching Civil War, as I was particularly taken by Peter and his line about needing to filter his eyesight or something. I saw Homecoming today (late to the party, I know) and I'm utterly behind the idea he's autistic so I decided to post this.
> 
> This is also why there's no mention of Ned, because at the time of writing I didn't know he existed and it was really hard to edit him in considering the tone.


End file.
